As some of you may be aware, I am a huge fan of letters. I like receiving them, writing them, and reading them. I also love epistolary novels, and even won first place in contest for writing an epistolary short story. Then today I thought, what is a blog post other than the body portion of a letter? And with that in mind, I decided todays blog is going to be a letter. Please enjoy this letter style blog post.
Dear friends, family, and other people snooping on my blog,
I’ve been thinking about space lately. Not as in the final frontier but as in the space that we take up and how our environment can completely alter any situation. Moving to Ames for the summer has made me more aware of the space surrounding me, and what things help make my space something I’m comfortable in.
VRAC (the place in which I’m interning) is a great space. The minute I got here I could feel it. I don’t have any clue how a space can so perfectly embody this feeling of learning, but the way it’s set up, the way people move in the space, even the way it sounds is so conducive to discovery. My new apartment is nice too. I was worried about living in a dorm, being away from my husband, and sharing a space with relative strangers but so far it’s been nothing but good things.
I feel as if our personal spaces are well designed for learning. My desk at VRAC- though fairly empty right now- is nice. I’m lucky that I got a spot that allows me to see everyone in the room, not just my project team. The conference room where we do a lot of our classes and lessons is right next to the intern desks and that’s very convenient. I don’t know what I expected of the space at ISU, but this is definitely better than my imagination. The only complaint I have is that VRAC doesn’t have bathrooms so we have to make sure to bring our keycards to get back in if we have to go. But honestly the fact that we have keycards allows me to play out “I’m a scientist working in a fancy lab” dreams makes it worth the slight hike.
Anyway this all to say, the space is good, not just physically, but it’s great for me mentally. It’s allowing me to step back from myself a bit and take a break from all the chaos of my everyday life. While I am here my priority is to learn and grow. And that’s not only exciting but it’s relaxing, in a way. I don’t necessarily know how to verbalize why, but it’s nice to feel as if I’m doing something that’s helpful beyond the specific minutiae of the actual things I’m doing. I can see how doing them is growing my knowledge in the field I’m attempting to make a career in.
I’m excited for this week. We’re learning to code! I don’t know a lot about coding. I started learning Java in January, but I quickly stalled out as the way that I was attempting to learn just wasn’t working for me. Hopefully this time I’ll get a bit further. They’re starting us with C++ but the game that my team will be working on is in JavaScript. I’m a little worried about the coding languages getting mixed up with all the other things going on in my head. I know programming languages are not the same as spoken language and our brains don’t store them the same way, but part of me is afraid it’ll only confuse me further, like how more and more often I just forget how to speak properly because I can’t remember what words are English and what words are the other languages that I’ve studied. On the other hand, the fact that I’ve been able to comprehend as much as I can of said other languages gives me hope that while- yes coding is very different- it won’t be nearly as hard as I’m working up in my head to be. Here’s hoping that’s the case! Work is starting back up again soon so I should go! Talk later!
Love long and prosper y’all,
Kris Skinner-Rathjens
P.S. Here are some pictures of (my) space.
Jake was very excited about installing these lights and I am definitely not complaining. They absolutely improve my studying. How could you not want to sit and read under lights like these?
